Stage and screen star Antonio Banderas, who made his Broadway debut in the Tony-winning revival of Nine, is headed back to the Great White Way.

Antonio Banderas
Photo by Aubrey Reuben

Banderas, according to the New York Post, will head the cast of a Broadway revival of Zorba next season. Barry and Fran Weissler will produce the production, which will be directed by The Color Purple's Gary Griffin with choreography by Sergio Trujillo. No official announcement about the production has been made.

Zorba features a score by John Kander and the late Fred Ebb and a book by Joseph Stein. The musical is based on the Nikos Kazantzakis novel "Zorba the Greek" (also known as a 1965 film starring Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates). Quinn starred in a revised 1983 revival of the zesty 1968 musical. Herschel Bernardi originated the role on stage.

Book writer Stein told the Post, "Antonio Banderas is, of course, much younger than Herschel and Tony were, and we'll have to make some adjustments [in the show] to that. But he will bring his own wonderful personality to it."

Zorba, according to press notes for a recent York Theater Musicals in Mufti production, "is set in Crete in 1924 and is about the friendship between Zorba and Nikos, a young American student who has inherited an abandoned mine on Crete, and their romantic relationships with a local widow and French woman, Hortense, respectively. "

Antonio Banderas, best known for his work in such films as “Evita,” “The Mask of Zorro,” “Philadelphia” and “Mambo Kings,” made his Broadway debut in the revival of Maury Yeston's Nine, earning a Tony nomination for his work as fictional film director Guido Contini. A member of Spain’s prestigious National Theater of Spain acting company from 1981-1986, the actor studied at the School of Dramatic Art in Malaga.